Many facilities, such as schools, hospitals, cafeterias, restaurants, prisons, etc., serve food portions from larger food containers. To serve the food from such a food container, a serving implement, such as a spoon, spoodle, ladle, etc., can be used to scoop and portion the food from the food container. Using these serving implements can be difficult and time consuming to provide consistent and accurate food portions served from the food container. For instance, if the food is not scooped properly with the serving implement, the food portion can be too large or too small. Also, the time spent trying to obtain the proper amount of food with the serving implement may slowdown the service line with attempts to level the food portion with the serving implement, such as by shaking the serving implement. Inaccurate food portions can also be costly when too much food is served in a food portion. For instance, food portions are typically served between about a 3 and 5% margin in order to control costs. Thus, there remains a need for a food portioning system to level food portions to provide accurate food portioning and/or to increase the speed of the serving line.
In some instances, these serving lines position the food container within a steam table to keep the food warm during serving. It can be difficult to quickly insert and/or remove the food container from such a steam table. For instance, to remove a food container from a steam table, a user typically pries the food container away from the table, which can result in pinched fingers. Further, because of the hot temperature of the steam table, a user can burn his or her fingers on the food container and/or steam table while trying to remove the food container, making removal of the food container unsafe. Thus, there remains a need for a system to more easily and safely carry, insert, and/or remove a food container from a steam table.